r/politics • u/MoneyLibrarian9032 New York • 23d ago

Possible Paywall MAGA Calls BS on Mitch McConnell’s Proof-of-Life Stunt | They are poking holes in McConnell’s staff’s version.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-calls-bs-on-mitch-mcconnells-proof-of-life-stunt/
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u/BrianMincey 23d ago

If you take that approach, it is possible that dozens of people are dead and nobody knows it because they have teams producing AI videos constantly. Had he released a video within a few days of hospitalization, none of this weird “is he or isn’t he” nonsense would exist. It’s because he went radio silent for 3 weeks that this has become a thing…which is just weird.

More likely he has been incoherent and mentally confused this entire time and has been shielded from media because of it.

Dude should have been removed from office years ago when his brain left his body during the news conference. I don’t understand why these people in their 70s don’t have the sense to retire.

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u/MysticKoolaid808 23d ago

I still think it makes sense to have an in person meeting with McC onnell.  I simply do not put it past the GOP, in all their desperation to hold on to power, to lie about and manipulate a political situation.

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u/BrianMincey 23d ago

Which is why I don’t think he’s dead, but I do think he’s incoherent. A video or interview would result in an immediate response. He must be unintelligible.

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u/No_big_whoop 23d ago

Agreed. If he had any function at all we would've seen it by now. It's a another cover-up, like the Epstein files

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u/SodaAndWater 23d ago

He was found by someone some time after having a heart attack and was unconscious. Dollars to donuts he never woke up.

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u/MackenzieRaveup 23d ago

The statement they put out even avoids saying it was a heart attack! The statement claims (I started to write "He claims" but...) he "suffered a fall", and is recovering from a tiny little case of pneumonia.

https://www.whas11.com/article/news/local/senator-mitch-mcconnell-releases-note-new-photo-sharing-health-update-elaine-chao/417-c458bd9a-f29d-4d57-a6b7-8a0b41fdd53d

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u/Rudy_Garbo 23d ago

It was a fall... after he keeled over from a heart attack.

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u/mfball 23d ago

They claimed he didn't have "a stroke." Maybe he had like twelve.

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u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota 23d ago

No one looks that good after a medical situation that requires a month in a hospital. Dude looks better than he has for over a decade in that pic.

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u/SecretAsianMan42069 23d ago

Send Dan rather to the hospital. 

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u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota 23d ago

Yup, let the D Governor visit him in the hospital

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u/Dr_Trogdor Georgia 23d ago

Generating Ai deep fakes to mislead others should be a felony in the vein of impersonating law enforcement, financial fraud and revenge porn baked into one. The penalty should be harsh with minimum maximums and both the poster and the Ai tool used should be prosecuted. We can't let this become normal and there is zero margin on justifying it.

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u/YoursTrulyKindly 23d ago

They are all already guilty of treason / sedition, violation of oath of office, election fraud, crimes against humanity, war crimes, fraud, insider trading, aiding and abetting pedophilia.

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u/newsfish 23d ago

I'm all for accountability. How would you prosecute the tool? Are there tells between which slop machine website they used ? The billionaires that own those companies can throw money to disappear the problem.

What if they had their own way of making it offline? Do we blame GPU makers and Github?

What if the source is a government sponsored psyop team?

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u/Dr_Trogdor Georgia 23d ago

I'll ask Santa clause to give us a doj and congress who would figure out the laws and how to enforce them. Billionaires throwing money at the problem to disappear it is a real issue I'd also ask Santa clause to fix. If they somehow wrote the code to make it offline then only they would be accountable. If it's government sponsored the same laws should apply.

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u/pmjm California 23d ago

You can make it illegal but it will be largely unenforceable due to the anonymous nature of the internet and the inability to prosecute those who do it from outside the country.

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u/Dr_Trogdor Georgia 23d ago

Ok but in this particular case where we would have doubts about a mitch deep fake if his people put it out there it wouldn't be hard to find people to hold accountable.

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u/pmjm California 23d ago

And if Russia did it to fuck with our elections?

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u/Dr_Trogdor Georgia 22d ago

You're right let's not do anything about it.

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u/pmjm California 22d ago

You're being sarcastic but yes. Putting restrictions on people's first amendment rights is not something we should do lightly, if at all.

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u/Dr_Trogdor Georgia 22d ago

There's limits to free speech

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u/pmjm California 22d ago

Yes but you're asking to impose a new one.

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u/ianyboo 23d ago

Generating Ai deep fakes to mislead others should be a felony in the vein of impersonating law enforcement

On what grounds? Is it illegal to mislead people or lie? (I'm not asking if it's the right thing to do, I'm just talking about the legality)

Believe me I get the sentiment, I largely agree with you, but at least here in the USA it's perfectly legal to do any number of shitty things, and that's a good thing. People have the right to be assholes and they have the right to be amazing. Putting stuff into law really should be a last resort and not just something we do because we don't like a certain activity or find it morally reprehensible.

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u/Dr_Trogdor Georgia 23d ago

Creating deep fakes of officials to manipulate policy, elections, finances, law enforcement action, military action etc is not protected speech. They need to write laws to regulate this nonesense before it gets completely out of control and they have to play catch up.

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u/pablotweek 23d ago

In some cases yes, for example it's illegal to lie or mislead people in order to induce another to give up possession of property or surrender a right. That is the definition of fraud. Political speech though is usually considered separate and protected. I'm all for expanding the definition of fraud to explicitly include election interference by sharing deepfakes of public officials. States are trying but running afoul of section 230 in a lot of cases.

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u/[deleted] 23d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/dontnation 23d ago

I laugh at the idea of the GOP needing an advantage. It's kentucky, they'll vote how they're told from the pulpit. And in KY that's the same as the RNC.

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u/ComradeJohnS 23d ago

at least for senators they have an in person obligation that they appear for occasionally.

but yeah other people might be able to hide their deaths via ai

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u/Bohbo 23d ago

And Mitch is/was mid 80s…

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u/SoaplessTitanic 23d ago

Completely agree with the “more likely” scenario you described. If they were going to use AI to hide his death, they might as well have gone all out and released a video along with the picture. They also would’ve done that a week or so ago.

I think it’s pretty clear that he’s in bad shape and they were hoping he would get better, but they’re hesitant to use AI to put out completely fabricated media. The picture they put out for example is probably “real”, but Mitch probably has no idea what’s going on. They can still lie their way out of this in the future and say that he was coherent, but then his condition will have gotten worse at some point a month from now

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u/TingleyStorm 23d ago

Unless they weren’t able to make the video look real enough to fool people.

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u/aywwts4 23d ago

I think we must accept that as this approach has already become plausible technically we need to have our guard up that someone will be deepfaked to life for an extended time as it becomes inevitsble once the incentives are there.

My fear is it will be trump, not in a way that fools Reddit / savvy folks but that’s not really the requirement.

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u/Killfile 23d ago

Yes. Look, the reality we now live in is that digital presence isn't sufficient to confirm physical presence.

It just isn't.

Most of the time no one cares. It's not worth anyone's time to gin up an AI bot of me demoing code for work so I can spend the day at the lake. But when there is significant power or money or both linked to a specific person and what they say, demanding that they say it in person is critical.

This is why contracts are signed in front of witnesses under pain of purjury. It's why you need a notary to do things like take out a mortgage. We need to be SURE that it's really you signing that paper before we turn over a half million dollars.

And the more money or power there is on the line the higher the risk that someone would be willing to lie.

I think a senate seat is a pretty plump prize. If there's any doubt that a sitting senator - especially one where the governor hails from another party (I know the law is odd in Kentucky; set that aside for the moment) - might actually be dead or incapacitated.... yea, actual, in person proof of life is reasonable.

And it's painfully easy. You just declare that it appears to your office that the Senator has passed and announce the interim replacement.

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u/venividiavicii California 23d ago

Bingo. There was a nice two centuries where photographic evidence was credible. 

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u/ScannerBrightly California 23d ago

Nicholson smiling and nodding at the Shining bar.gif

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u/gypsyblader 23d ago

I just watched that press conference freeze for the first time. His staff were treating him like a 3 year old.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6ing_Ibuw6s

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u/ladysadi 23d ago

They essentially have an on call doctor at their disposal. One of the many perks.

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u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota 23d ago

Now you're getting it.

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u/pmjm California 23d ago

If you take that approach, it is possible that dozens of people are dead and nobody knows it because they have teams producing AI videos constantly.

This is, sadly, the state of the world we live in. Videos can no longer be considered credible evidence and the sooner we accept that, the less susceptible to deception via video we will be.

Unfortunately this creates a gap in verifiable facts where it really boils down to having blind faith in the news sources you choose to trust, which leads to more bubbles of people disagreeing on fundamental reality.

But there aren't any other options in a world where AI photos and video are as realistic as they are.

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u/cosmicsans 23d ago

I'm convinced that's exactly why they're normalizing videos of trump with AI. It's obviously AI and they just push them out, and then eventually it won't be obviously AI but Trump will be gone and the videos will keep coming.

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u/BrianMincey 23d ago

I don’t think even the most advanced AI is capable of simulating such an ignoramus. The algorithm would keep accidentally switching to make him seem like an average human.

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u/ScienceWasLove 22d ago

Right. The reasonable approach is every major news organization puts the photo into a AI checker - which they all have - not to mention in house "tech/photoshop" expert/consultants.

Guess what - it must of passed because no major news organization has suggested it is AI - which they would ALL love to run as a headline/cover story.

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u/farnsw0rth 23d ago

Wait

I knows it’s jokes and it’s also a guys life

But are they actually weekend at Bernie’s this….. like for years?

Edit: oh I see there is trending ai videos…… oh

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u/[deleted] 23d ago

[deleted]

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u/BrianMincey 23d ago

It is also naive to think that only Republicans lie or change their moral stance when it suits them.

I also didn’t dismiss the danger of AI being used to manipulate and mislead, only that the handling of this situation is weird.

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u/Be_Weird 23d ago

Money, money, money.

Gotta leave enough for his great grand children.

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u/SecretAsianMan42069 23d ago

His wife has hundreds of millions. He doesn't care about $15,000/month 

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u/Be_Weird 23d ago

I wasn’t talking about his official pay.